The Digital Divide in the Focus of Intergenerational Communication

The preamble analyzes discourse on understanding the digital intergenerational divide. The key approaches to the conceptualization of this concept through the prism of socioeconomic and generational approaches in foreign and Russian research discourse are considered. There is a lack of approaches to the analysis of the features of social network behavior of digital and pre-digital generations, their cooperation and conflict in the use of social media. A new conceptualization of the digital generational divide is proposed as a dynamic unity of network communication cooperation (with elements of mentoring and patronizing from the younger ones within family communities) and network conflict isolation (based on voluntary social platform segregation). Based on the assessments and opinions of representatives of the digital generation, identified as a result of a series of field studies within the framework of a research project dedicated to the study of the network culture of the digital generation, generational differences in the profiles of digital competencies are identified, the mechanisms of digital literacy transmission and platform adjustment are analyzed as manifestations of the digital generational divide. In particular, there is a high self-assessment of the level of development of digital competencies on the part of young people and criticality in relation to their digital skills of elders, the presence of a subjective awareness of the digital intergenerational gap on the part of the respondents. Based on the method of mirror mutual assessment by representatives of digital/pre-digital generations of digital competencies and user behavior of each other, the corresponding competence deficits of each generation are identified. The extra-institutional nature of the social network cyber socialization is determined, when its key agents are peers and bloggers, rather than parents and teachers. With regard to the broadcast of digital skills, the phenomenon of "reverse mentoring" and the practice of "digital patronizing/dependence" are described, when grandchildren and children lead their personal accounts for the elderly and carry out online communications with government institutions. Partial platform intergenerational voluntary segregation is analyzed as a trend of "communicative fashion", a way of communicative detachment from elders and a manifestation of the generational digital divide.

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